


Aisle 7

by CasualGravity



Series: AkuSai Month 2019 [2]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Akusai Month 2019, Domestic Fluff, Grocery Shopping, Heart-to-Heart, M/M, PDA, Slowburn Prompts, passing mention of other characters, post-kh3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 08:42:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20306662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CasualGravity/pseuds/CasualGravity
Summary: Isa helps Lea with his grocery shopping and isn't the mature one for once.





	Aisle 7

**Author's Note:**

> Day 2
> 
> **Forgiveness**  
(I feel that "What's up with you and picking up stray puppies?" is still here in spirit even though I couldn't work the quote in)

“You really didn’t need to help me with errands, you know. We could’ve met up after.”

Isa looked up from the box of cheap cake mix he’d been examining with probably a little too much seriousness and over at where his boyfriend was staring at the screen of his gummiphone. They’d come to the store to do _his_ shopping, but he’d spent way more time leaning on the cart, letting Isa do all the work for him.

“And miss the chance to see you out in public in your pajamas? I’d never turn down that opportunity,” He joked, taking in Lea’s flannel pajama pants and the way his wild hair was tied back from his face with no small amount of judgment. Even with their time in the Organization months behind them, it still felt weird for either of them to be so underdressed. Lea did look good though, but Isa wasn’t going to tell him that. “Besides, I didn’t want you to have to run errands on your own.”

“Aw, I wasn’t expecting you to be so nice!” Lea crowed, flinching a fraction of a second before Isa even brandished the box of cake mix at him. Isa thought about following through and just pelting him with it, but he dropped it into the cart instead. Lea laughed, his smile bright and unrepentant. “I mean it though. It was nice of you to come, Isa.”

Isa just grunted at him and turned back to the shelves to hide his amusement. A moment passed where they both remained unproductive but content in one another’s space before Lea hummed contemplatively. Isa listened to him fish something out of the cart and turned when there was a tap on his shoulder.

With the corner of the cake box he’d just playfully threatened Lea with.

“Grab a white cake instead. Or chocolate. Both maybe?” Lea said. There was a look on his face that wasn’t _bad_, but Isa didn’t quite recognize it.

“I thought you liked spice cake?” Isa took the box even as he asked and put it back where he’d found it. After a quick look at the array of brands and cake types in front of him, he grabbed both a white mix and a chocolate mix that looked decent and handed them to Lea. “Has that changed?”

“Nah, I still like it, but you don't and I’m not sure if any of the kids will eat it either. Better to just play it safe or it'll go to waste."

Isa threw a smug glance at Lea as they both started moving out of the aisle.

“Since when are you worried about something like that?”

“Since they got _picky_,” Lea whined, letting the momentum of the cart continue to carry it forward so he could throw his hands up in exasperation. “They have the freedom to not like things now and they’re running with it. Which is _fine_ but they’re really testing my limited culinary skills.”

It was Isa’s turn to laugh now. And he did--loudly enough to startle the housewife eyeing overpriced steak a few yards away. Lea frowned petulantly at him, but let him laugh a little longer before giving him a swat on the shoulder.

“It really doesn’t take much to hit the limits of your cooking skills.” Isa teased. Still laughing a little, he grabbed a bag of plastic cups off the endcap and dropped it into the cart.

“Excuse me, of the—,” Lea paused, seeming to take a mental tally. “Three of us, I’m the best cook.”

“Three of us? Who are you counting? You, me and…?”

“Roxas. Namine, Xion _and_ Olette are banned from any future cooking attempts after the Pressure Cooker Incident.” Lea clarified with a haunted look in his eyes that nearly sent Isa into another fit of mocking laughter.

“Right, of course. How could I forget that.” He’d had to come all the way from Radiant Garden to help everyone clean up the mess. They’d spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get all of the raw chicken skin off of the ceiling and out of Roxas’s hair while the girls had looked on, red-faced with embarrassment. Old Scrooge had been tickled pink by their story when all eight of them had turned up at the Bistro for a late dinner. Only Hayner considered the sleepover anything even approaching a success. It had been a disaster through and through, but Isa was sure that Lea remembered the whole debacle with the same happiness that he did, destroyed kitchen aside.

“Yeah, so Xion and Namine are banished from the kitchen until the end of time and Roxas refuses to try. With a solid D minus, I am the best cook.” Lea continued with way more pride than his barely passing grade warranted. They were starting to drift towards the produce now, but Isa couldn’t remember what had been on the shopping list that they’d need from there.

“I think I do perfectly fine as a cook.” He said just to wind Lea up again before it got too quiet. Lea, of course, took the bait.

“Ha! You crack eggs like they owe you munny and you’re a bigger fire hazard than _me_! The guy whose only schtick is fire,” Lea paused his tirade for a moment to grab a produce bag out of the dispenser and start filling it with pears. When he’d picked out a few nice ones, he continued almost plaintively with, “I can literally count the number of times I’ve gotten you to stay in the mansion with us by how many toasters I’ve had to replace.”

“Lea—,” He had miscalculated.

“_Four_. Four toasters, Isa. Gone before their time,” Lea punctuated his statement by dropping the bag of pears into the child’s seat of the cart where they wouldn’t get crushed. Though he gave as good as he got, it was rare that Lea got the upperhand when they heckled one another. Isa always managed to forget how merciless he could get when he was pressing an advantage. “There is a broken toaster for every month that we’ve been dating.”

“Please tell me you’re not marking our anniversaries with broken appliances.” Isa groaned. His pride was the only thing keeping him from covering his face in embarrassment. He allowed himself to stare resolutely at the neat display of cantaloupe behind Lea though, if only to give the illusion that he was maintaining eye contact.

“If I could afford it, I would absolutely mark our anniversaries with all the stuff of mine you’ve broken,” There was a softly teasing note in Lea’s voice that had Isa’s eyes snapping back to his face. The atmosphere between them quickly shifted from the familiar easiness of their badgering to something that never failed to make Isa feel like he was boiling in his own skin. Lea’s voice swung back into more casual territory when he continued though; putting a stop to what usually came next when he spoke like that. It did nothing to stop Isa from feeling suddenly keyed up. “You’re coming to the mansion for the party this weekend, right? It’s gonna be the first time we’ve all gotten together since Sora and Riku got back.”

“I haven’t decided.” Isa lied. He’d made up his mind the minute whispers of a party happening at all had started making the rounds, he just hadn’t found an adequate way to back out. Isa hadn’t been _avoiding_ Lea’s ever-expanding social circle; far from it. He’d spent time with all the guardians save Sora and Riku at some point or another. There were even days where he felt like they were his friends too and not just pitying him for Lea’s sake.

But Isa wasn’t sure if Lea would understand how ice cream at the clocktower or rough-housing on the beach was different than being in the mansion. It didn’t feel like neutral ground and Isa was loath to insinuate himself into Roxas and Xion’s space. The… four times Lea had convinced him to stay there, he’d made an effort to keep himself scarce.

“Oh, come on, Isa. It’ll be fun,” Lea wheedled. Isa watched him as he grabbed a bag of red apples next and, after a moment of shuffling the rest of the cart’s contents around, dropped them in with a little less care than he’d shown the pears. “Besides, it’s not just going to be a bunch of teenagers. There’ll be other adults.”

“Oh?” That shouldn’t have been as much of a selling point as it was.

“Yea, Master Aqua’s coming…” Lea trailed off for a moment. “Terra counts.”

“What a _line-up_. You’re still going to be outnumbered.” He laughed, continuing up the aisle. The sound of the cart’s wheels not _quite_ squeaking told him that Lea had followed.

“Just me?” Lea asked, his voice barely loud enough to be heard over the tinny, forgettable music piping out of the loudspeaker. Well, that wasn’t how Isa had intended to say he wasn’t going. He’d been leaning towards a text at an ungodly hour the day of the event, not cornered in the produce section for half of Twilight Town to see.

“I don’t think I’ll be going.” He said, pointedly scrutinizing cartons of raspberries that had been painstakingly arranged to keep them from crushing one another. They were out of season and more expensive than they had any right to be. They could get better in Radiant Garden.

Behind him, Lea grew quiet. Isa shuddered to think what kind of sad-eyed look he’d be beset by if he risked a glance at his boyfriend. He liked to think that he had better resolve, but he knew that he was fooling himself.

“You know they’ve forgiven you, right?” Lea said after it became clear that Isa wasn’t going to break the silence first. “I mean, Roxas can be a little prickly but he is fifteen. Kind of. It comes with the territory.”

“They shouldn’t—”

“If you’re about to tell me about how you don’t deserve their forgiveness then I might have to fight you,” Lea interrupted, his teasingly admonishing tone more than his words causing Isa to finally break and meet his eyes. He was, once again, leaning his long frame up against the cart, a glint in his eyes to match his ‘threat’. Isa glared, warning, but Lea continued. “I’m serious. I’ll call half of my contact list, there’ll be keyblades involved and everything. Then we’ll both get blacklisted and you’ll have to go all the way to the Mom and Pop stores on Destiny Islands to do your shopping.”

Isa pressed his lips into a thin line, the urge to smile warring with the souring mood that he desperately wanted to cling to. Lea was smiling enough for both of them though, obviously seeing a second victory coming to him.

“I can still do my shopping in Radiant Garden. Remember, I’m only here as a favor.” Isa shot back. Lea smiled wider, ambling away from the cart to drape his arms over Isa’s shoulders; a clear tactic to keep him from ending their heart-to-heart with a retreat. Isa let him, but not before glancing quickly around them to gauge how much of an audience their nonsense was garnering. Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be more than a few people around and they seemed perfectly content to ignore them.

“I know for a fact that the grocery in Radiant Garden is run by the same lady that ran it when we were kids and I bet you my next Winner stick that she still remembers every time we made a mess of her store,” Lea said, still beaming. His arms tighten a little around Isa’s shoulders but Isa keeps his own loose at his sides to be contrary. “You can’t do all your shopping at the farmer’s market forever.”

“I don’t do _all_ of my shopping at the market,” He huffed. Much quieter though, he added, “I wait for the days I know her daughter is working to shop there.”

“I knew it.”

“You did n—” Isa’s attempt to drag their discussion even further away from his reticence to spend time with Lea’s other friends is silenced before it can start by a quick peck on the corner of his mouth.

“Back to you making things harder for yourself and me being the mature one for once though.” Lea continued, either oblivious to or completely uncaring of how red Isa’s face was suddenly. “Listen, I can’t change the way you feel about… everything. But that goes both ways. You don’t get to decide if you’ve been forgiven or not just because you feel like you haven’t filled some kind of penance quota. Everyone forgave you a while ago.”

Isa didn’t know how to respond to that. He suddenly felt very cornered. Touched, but cornered. Seeming to sense this, Lea gave him another peck—this time directly on the mouth—and lingered.

“Again. Both ways. I pulled stuff too. A lot of stuff.” Had they not been so close together, Isa probably wouldn’t have heard him with the way his voice had seemed to lose volume.

“Some of that at my behest.” Isa chided quietly, finally relenting and returning the embrace. Lea’s groceries were all but forgotten where he’d left them blocking foot traffic in the aisle and Isa didn’t care.

“Beside the point,” Lea said, his smile turning wry. “Take however long you need to feel okay with everyone. You don’t need to come to the thing this weekend if you’re not feeling up to it. Just remember that everyone’ll be excited to see you if you do. Especially me.”

“You aren’t sounding like yourself. Is this something I can expect from you more often?”

Lea laughed deep in his chest and rested his forehead against Isa’s, the mischief returning to his eyes.

“Sorry, that’s all you’re getting out of me for the rest of the year,” Another kiss; there and gone before Isa could turn it into something that’d last like he wanted to. “I only have enough responsible adult energy to lie my way through parent-teacher conferences. It’s all I’ve got. You’re on your own.”

Just the idea of Lea trying to smooth talk his way through something as mundane as a parent-teacher conference sent his mood skyrocketing.

“I don’t envy you.” He said, barely containing his smile.

“You shouldn’t. I’m so bad at it,” Isa doubted that, but didn’t say so. Lea had taken to his new life a lot better than he gave himself credit for. Or, he at least had Isa feeling like he was being left behind in a lot of regards. It was never how he saw things turning out for them when they were young.

Almost reluctantly, Lea began to pull away, but didn’t get far before Isa was dragging him back in for another kiss. This one was hungry, Isa holding Lea in place however he could so he couldn’t duck away from it or tease him again. Lea laughed, soft, and Isa bit at his lip just to hear the way it tapered off into a moan.

“Let’s finish up here so you can put actual clothes on and we can go to lunch,” Isa mumbled when the need to breath finally drove them apart. Lea stepped back, giving Isa a better view of the faint blush high on his cheeks and how red his lips had become. Isa shivered. The chill of the misters and the refrigeration was already seeping in without Lea’s body pressed against his. “What do you have left.”

“Sweet potatoes,” Lea answered hoarsely. He walked back to the cart and began pushing it towards the aforementioned item on his list. “Roxas and Xion haven’t tried them before so it could go either way. You should’ve seen the look Xion gave me when she tried green peppers when we ate out a couple of weeks ago. I’ve never seen someone go through all five stages of grief that quickly.”

“If you’re trying to replicate that by forcing them to eat sweet potatoes, you deserve what happened to your pressure cooker.” Isa quipped. As he made a cursory attempt to straighten his hair and clothes, he caught the eye of a man on the other side of the aisle who had clearly been attempting to grab what he needed and go without being noticed. Isa fixed him with the flattest stare he could manage while being so visibly mussed, daring him to say something. If it were at all possible, the stranger avoided eye contact even harder, ears going red.

“And my toasters?” Lea called back, bringing Isa’s attention back to him.

“Definitely those too. You really brought this on yourself.” He made to follow Lea, letting his boyfriend's playfully feigned offense wash away the last of his uncertainty. By the time they'd gotten into the check-out line to pay, Isa had already decided where he wanted to have lunch.

A party in the mansion didn't seem quite as daunting.

**Author's Note:**

> Isa strikes me as one of those people that isn't intentionally rough with things but somehow manages to add a decade of wear and tear to any appliance they come into contact with.
> 
> I know AkuSai month is over, but it _is_ still Axel month and I'm six days away from something I'm dreading. So here, have my late fills for all of these prompts.
> 
> **Edit 8/31/19** Glanced back over this and realized that I, like a madwoman, somehow missed several lines at the end of the work? So much love and appreciation to the people that still liked this even though I technically posted an incomplete version.


End file.
